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Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Results of Community Based Team Projects

Students in my SPAN 232 course, "Spanish
& Entrepreneurship: Languages, Cultures & Communities," have to do
a team project in addition to their 28 hours of community service learning
work. These are the results of one of the teams from Spring 2014. The intent is
to have them go through the entrepreneurial process on a small scale, create
something of true value, and develop their teamwork skills. --Ann Abbott

by César, Skye and Kim

What?

Our
group project was to act as the “web masters” for the East Central
Illinois Refugee Mutual Assistance
Center (ECIRMAC) Facebook page. The women from the ECIRMAC office made clear they wanted us to
post information relevant to the mission and work of the Refugee Center
every weekday (Monday through Friday) to maintain the interest of followers and
clients. Our posts varied depending on the amount of news coming from the
office. Some of our posts consisted of updates around the office and information
about upcoming events so that clients and volunteers
were able to easily obtain this information via Facebook. If we did not have
enough posts for the week with just office information, then we would post about
articles, pictures or motivational quotes that we felt would increase the
interest of the Facebook followers. The main purpose of our project was to
increase awareness about the Refugee Center through social media (Facebook) and
to keep these followers informed about our work. The Refugee Center aims to
provide necessary services to the immigrant
and refugee populations in the area and this page helps these populations more
easily find how our organization can help them. Our goal for the semester was to
augment the amount of followers to 350 people (or
350 Facebook “likes”).

The ECIRMAC page needs to continue growing both in likes and
in reach, which can only be done with consistent posting. I will be
staying on as the Social Media Manager
and creating relevant and engaging content for the page. Creating a database of
possible posts, images, videos and articles will ensure that posts are useful
and will assist in weekly planning. While I am away or unable to post daily,
posts can be scheduled ahead of time so that the page does not suffer. We
successfully reached our goal of 350 likes by the end of the semester; we
believe setting goals like this are important to maintain motivation and measure
success. So, another goal should be
set for the future. The ladies o fthe center should be educated on the
management of the page in the event that a Social Media Manager is not available
to run the page for a period of time. More detailed analysis of the Facebook
insights would also assist the page in the future as they would provide
information as the what type of content is successful and what time of day is
optimal.

So what?

During
our group project, making our posts relevant to our viewers was crucial, as the
likes and comments we receive are able to promote the page and thus enable us
to achieve our end-of-semester goal,
which was to get the page to 350 likes by the end of the semester. Our posts on
the page included things such as motivational quotes, current news, and even
the promotion of ECIRMAC’s annual Fundraiser Banquet, which is crucial for the
maintenance of ECIRMAC. Setting such goals for ourselves was very helpful
because it allowed us to see our progress throughout the semester. This
self-evaluation allowed us to assess how to change what we posted in order to
gain “likes” throughout the semester. For example, we were able to see that
pictures of people that work in the
office and our clients received the most “likes” on the page because people
like seeing people they know on social media websites; therefore, we would
continue to post pictures of ‘real’ people. Additionally, we were able to
announce days when the Refugee Center was closed due to bad weather so that the
volunteers and clients did not waste their time travelling to the center. The
posts that may have been the most helpful were those that made the public aware
of events with Mayte and other employees
that took place out of the office. We are confident that our continual posts
during the semester have helped ECIRMAC because we can see the feedback via
Facebook “likes” and comments from community members. If anything, this
semester long project has taught us the importance of social media and what we
can achieve through it.

Now what?

The ECIRMAC page needs to continue growing both in likes and
in reach, which can only be done with consistent posting. I will be
staying on as the Social Media Manager
and creating relevant and engaging content for the page. Creating a database of
possible posts, images, videos and articles will ensure that posts are useful
and will assist in weekly planning. While I am away or unable to post daily,
posts can be scheduled ahead of time so that the page does not suffer. We
successfully reached our goal of 350 likes by the end of the semester; we believe
setting goals like this are important to maintain motivation and measure
success. So, another goal should be
set for the future. The ladies of the center should be educated on the
management of the page in the event that a Social Media Manager is not available
to run the page for a period of time. More detailed analysis of the Facebook
insights would also assist the page in the future as they would provide
information as the what type of content is successful and what time of day is
optimal.

This assignment
taught us a lot about being a team, and about social media management. Through
this project we learned the importance of an online presence for an organization
like ECIRMAC. This experience has also allowed all of us to have a different
perspective of social media; we can now see it as a dynamic working platform and
not just a personal outlet. Overall, we are very proud and honored to have been
able to assist ECIRMAC in their online growth and reach their goals.